Relate is a national UK charity focused on providing relationship support, guidance and counselling across all sectors of society.

Their latest campaign, entitled The Best Medicine, aims to draw attention to the crucial role our relationships play in coping with ill health, both mental and physical, chronic and acute. The role of relationships in coping with ill health is huge and yet sadly somewhat overlooked by the NHS (the UK’s national health service). To quote their own words, Relate are:

calling on the government to put relationships at the heart of the NHS, making relationship support available to everyone who needs it.

I was very pleased to have been approached about contributing to Relate’s campaign and more than happy to share my story. My relationships with friends, family and Mr B, have played a key role in my journey thru ME/CFS. I am very fortunate that I am blessed with many wonderful relationships and surrounded by loved ones who care for me and would do anything to help me cope with my illness. I would not be where I am today without their support.

My post was published last week on Relate’s site and you can read it here.

I hope you will read my post on Relate’s site and I encourage you to sign their petition on this campaign and explore their site. Relationships are a huge, and largely untapped resource, in coping with ill health. It is an interesting and thought provoking topic. Reading the other personal stories is eye opening and very moving. So why not pop on over to Relate and have a read for yourself.

Like this:

Jenny over at MEcuperate recently asked me to write a post about yoga for ME/CFS. She had picked up on my love of yoga through my persistent tweeting on the subject. I was more than happy to oblige. As regular readers of my blog will know, I am well and truly, madly and totally, in love with yoga and it’s wondrous effects on my body and ME/CFS.

Once you’re done reading all about how yoga has helped me in my journey thru ME/CFS please do have an explore of Jenny’s site. MEcuperate is a treasure trove of insight, experience and positivity for all of us touched by ME/CFS.

This is the first blog post I have written in a month. My last post was all about the big step forward I had taken in my health thanks to the Lightning Process and how I was going to take a little blogging break to focus on my recovery. I am pleased to report that things are going well for me. I am steadily building my strength and stamina and continuing to take steps ever more towards a Life I Love.

I want to take a moment to say a HUGE thank you for all the lovely supportive comments that so many of you, my dear readers, left for me on that last post. It meant the world to me that you were supportive and happy for me. I’m sorry that I haven’t replied to all of you individually. But please do know that I am sincerely grateful for your support and kind words.

Writing this article for Jenny made me realize just how much I’ve missed blogging in the last few weeks. The break was necessary and very helpful for me but I feel now that I am ready to return to the blogging world. So watch this space, another post from me will be winging its way through cyber space very soon.

Until then, why not check out my article on MEcuperate and all of the other wonderful information and resources that Jenny has compiled there.

Why are ME/CFS sufferers (too tired to think of a more positive word) persecuted like this? Our lives are daily struggles and yet the powers that be don’t seem to be able to grasp that this illness matters in any sense. 250,000 people are estimated to have ME/CFS in the UK. And that’s only counting those actually diagnosed. I suffered for several years before getting finally diagnosed. I am not an anomaly and compared to many my diagnosis came quickly. 25% of sufferers are severely affected, bedridden, tube fed, unable to do anything for themselves; lost dignity and no quality of life. Given ME/CFS is so prevalent and debilitating why is it maligned and side lined? Please reblog and share this post in any way you can. Raising awareness of our situation is vital and the only weapon we have.

By now everyone in the ME/CFS community (in America anyway) is familiar with the controversy over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hiring an outside contractor to develop a new definition of ME/CFS. If you’ve somehow missed everything that’s occurred on this front in the past month, here’s the 50 peso version:

HHS announced that they were going to hire an outside contractor to, among other things, redefine ME/CFS and create diagnostic criteria. The leading candidate was a company called the Institute of Medicine (IOM). IOM had previously been hired to conduct similar work related to Gulf War Syndrome and, by most accounts, completely botched the job, leading to much frustration by GWS sufferers…